Mr George Galloway

24 February 2005

Q380  Sir Philip Mawer: You have seen that?

Mr Galloway: From The Guardian, yes.

Q381  Sir Philip Mawer: Sorry, from?

Mr Galloway: The Guardian.

Q382  Sir Philip Mawer: Forgive me, perhaps I could come back to our list of topics to cover. I think we are near the end, if you agree. We have dealt with, if I may just recap, the position in relation to the appeal, the possible issues under the code of conduct, the documents discovered by The Daily Telegraph in Baghdad and what you think about their provenance and authenticity. We have touched on the Mariam Appeal and I have access of course to the Charity Commission report[27] on the appeal and I am aware of their findings there. We have discussed Mr Zureikat's role both in terms of your nomination of him as your representative—

Mr Galloway: On all matters concerning the Mariam Appeal and the Emergency Committee. I am just keen that no-one gets the impression that he had some plenipotentiary role representing—

Q383  Sir Philip Mawer: I understand the distinction you are making there, and we have touched on his role in relation to the Mariam Appeal both as Chairman for a period and from, I think you said, 2000.

Mr Galloway: I think 2000 until it closed.

Q384  Sir Philip Mawer: And as a major donor. We have also touched on the Oil for Food Programme and you are not disputing in that context that Mr Zureikat may have traded in oil and may have been in receipt of oil—

Mr Galloway: And, therefore, I cannot dispute that some of the donations he made to the Mariam Appeal came from profits that he made from his business with Iraq. I am not able to differentiate between the profits he made in his dealings with Saudi Arabia or Egypt and Iraq. I never asked, and I do not think I can be expected to ask, where that particular piece of his profits came from. I am not at all disputing that he was a businessman trading in many places, including Iraq, and that he funded our campaign as the second biggest donor. However, in Alda's presence, I would make this point: that not even my worst enemy, and that includes The Daily Telegraph, is suggesting that people were giving money to me personally. If they were giving money to me personally, Alda would have had to hear about it. I would have had to register it as income for me. Now, if I am involved in a political campaign and it is receiving financial support, I did not register with her that a political campaign I was involved in got money from the King of Saudi Arabia, so why would I register with her that I got money from Fawaz Zureikat? I think that is an important point and probably the last point that I have got to make.

Q385  Sir Philip Mawer: If you were, knowingly, in receipt of money, as I put it indelicately or colloquially before, which had come to you from the Iraqi regime via Mr Zureikat and the Mariam Appeal—

Mr Galloway: Sure, but is anyone suggesting that? Even Mr Andrew Yale is not suggesting that people were sending me money.

Q386  Sir Philip Mawer: It is a possible explanation, given the information which is available. I think I know what your view is of that, but give me your view.

Mr Galloway: Well, there was an exchange about this in the courtroom in the libel case. If I had been soliciting funds from the Iraqi regime to help our anti-sanctions, anti-war campaign, I would have been a fool, but if I had been soliciting money from the Iraqi regime for my personal benefit, I would be much worse than a fool; I would be a fool, a knave, a liar and a cheat. I would be robbing my own friends and I would be fooling millions of people. That is a much, much more serious thing and I cannot allow that second charge to pass. The first charge, I realise the fact that one of our donors as a matter of fact, it turns out, and I tell you this and you are the only person I have ever told this, it turns out, if there is any truth in these Iraqi oil documents, that Sheikh Zaid, who gave us the £½ million, was trading in Iraqi oil. It is one of the most surprising names that you see on that list. If true, the same charge can be made about him as is made about Zureikat, that they were trading with Iraq and they were donating money to our campaign. Maybe some of the profits they made in their trading with Iraq they gave to our campaign, but I do not know that. I doubt it. Sheikh Zaid was a fabulously wealthy man and it would be very difficult to isolate the profits from that particular business. However, I realise, and I have accepted from the beginning, indeed I wrote in The Independent newspaper in the very first week of this controversy after the Telegraph story, that if you want to criticise me for taking money for our campaign from a King, a Sheikh and a businessman who was doing business with Iraq, fair enough, criticise. I would argue that needs must, as I said, if you will forgive me quoting myself, but do not allege that I was taking money for myself because that makes me much worse than a fool. It makes me the lowest form of life, to personally enrich yourself, and you do not know me, so you do not know this, but let me tell you that I am a political man to the tips of my fingertips. I am not remotely interested in money. If I was interested in money, I could be very, very wealthy, but I am not, as a simple look at my bank account, which you are welcome to do at any time by the way, would testify. In fact this Daily Telegraph appeal is the worst news that I have had in a very long time.

Q387  Sir Philip Mawer: It would be a possible explanation, would it not, that the Iraqi regime was keen to support financially the anti-sanctions work which you were engaged in and was quite happy to award contracts to people who would subsequently become major donors to that work.

Mr Galloway: Yes, but there are two caveats to that. First, Zureikat was already doing very big business with the Iraqi regime under the Oil for Food Programme not necessarily in oil, but under the Oil for Food Programme because he was working for Thomson's and other major international multinational companies and he was already doing big business with Iraq before he ever met me and before he had donated a penny to the Mariam Appeal. Dr Chalabi, as far as I know, donated no more than £1,000, and maybe less, to our campaign. Therefore, if the thesis is that these two businessmen were given contracts so that they could support our campaign, I think it falls on both of those counts that one of them actually did not support our campaign very much and the other was already getting lots of contracts from Iraq before he ever started supporting us. However, I say, and I refer you to my Independent piece, I am open to be criticised for fundraising, and I think what I said in The Independent is that fundraising for political campaigns is seldom pretty. Ask Mr Blair vis-à-vis the Ecclestone and Mittal affairs, ask the Conservative Party vis-à-vis Azil Nadir and so on. Fundraising for political campaigns is seldom pretty. It was not a pretty experience for me to ask for money from the kings of Arabia, whom I normally excoriate in my every speech. It was not, but needs must. Criticise me for that, but just do not allege that I am a thief. That is my point.

Q388  Sir Philip Mawer: Well, I am not making allegations at all.

Mr Galloway: No, I know you are not, but that is my case.

Q389  Ms Barry: To go back to the documents, there are certainly two views about the authenticity, not the veracity, of the documents. I do not know if you could let us see your man's report, the forensic report, that because they are photocopies, they could not be—

Mr Galloway: I will certainly ask Mr Bays, yes.

Q390  Ms Barry: Because, as I say, there are other views and the former head of Saddam's protocol, yes, possibly a tainted source, is alleged to have said that the long one, the Mariam memorandum, looks like something produced by Al Takriti.

Mr Galloway: By the way, The Mail on Sunday retained him to look at the documents that they purchased and he said the same thing about those documents that later turned out to be ludicrous forgeries.

Q391  Ms Barry: Then there is the other gentleman currently from St Anthony's College, Al Marashi, and I do not know much about him either. He wrote in The Daily Telegraph and he confirmed to us that based on his previous experience of Iraqi intelligence files, the Telegraph documents were probably genuine, and that is an internal analysis rather than the paper, so it would be helpful.

Mr Galloway: Well, because what you call 'the main' documents are photocopies, there is no way of making an issue in that we could not say that the ink is not old enough. You know what happened in the Christian Science Monitor case? It turned out that the ink—

Q392  Sir Philip Mawer: Understood.

Q393  Ms Barry: There are things like the age of paper and style and so on, so I just make those points.

Mr Galloway: The problem is that the alleged date of the documents is sufficiently modern.

Q394  Ms Barry: Too close, yes.